TOWN PLANNING AND THE BUILT ENVIRONMENT,
1918-39

The council's commitment to providing municipal
housing led it to accept the principle of urban regulation through town planning. In 1917 it commissioned
Professor Patrick Abercrombie to consult with the city
engineer on the preparation of a town planning
scheme, necessary for the development of the Buddicom housing estate and to regulate land use, (fn. 1) and
from 1918 began to set up such a scheme. By 1919 it
had resolved to develop Chester as 'a residential town,
a shopping and business centre, a social meeting
ground, a recreational resort and a focus for artistic
effort'. (fn. 2)

Permission was sought to extend the planning zone
to include areas outside the municipal boundaries,
notably Hoole urban district, parts of Chester and
Tarvin rural districts, and Hawarden rural district
(Flints.), on the grounds that they were inextricably
linked with the city's economy. (fn. 3) Regional planning was
needed to build a ring-road and so relieve the city's
traffic congestion, and to improve the Dee by preventing flooding, deepening the channel, and reclaiming
land for industrial development. The Ministry of
Health set up a joint committee of local authorities
in 1920, and in 1923 approved the Deeside Regional
Planning Scheme, but Chester was allowed to include
in its own plan only those parts of Hoole and the rural
districts which were already built up. (fn. 4)

Little positive action came out of Chester's early
planning initiatives except the designation of areas of
the city as residential, commercial, recreational, or
industrial; by 1926, maps showing 'zoning' had been
prepared, confining shops to the city centre and
excluding them from residential areas. (fn. 5) A further
attempt by the council to control development over
land outside the borough boundaries, in the wake of
new town-planning legislation in 1928, was unsuccessful. (fn. 6)

A preliminary planning scheme, approved by the
government by 1933, contained little that would prevent environmentally destructive building projects
within the borough. Despite growing local concern
about environmental damage to the historic city, (fn. 7)
constructive proposals for its development were slow
to emerge. In 1940 a draft development scheme
confined itself to generalities, except for a proposal to
develop high-value land in the city centre made available by the clearance of the Princess Street slums.
Further planning was then abandoned because of the
war. (fn. 8) In 1941 Chester was described by one embittered
citizen as an example of 'unplanned, greedy development at its worst', its streets 'airless, narrow, overhung,
traffic-bound, bottle-necked alleys' fronting 'an agglomeration of slums'. (fn. 9)

Traffic. The most serious threat to Chester's environment was motorized traffic, the volume of which was
increasing rapidly. By 1914 the number of vehicles had
grown to the point that the coroner thought that a
speed limit of 10 miles an hour ought to be imposed. (fn. 10)
On bank holidays there were frequently long queues of
traffic attempting the journey through the city centre
to the seaside resorts of north Wales. Local traffic also
increased because of the concentration of commercial
and business premises at the heart of the city. Traffic on
the main roads doubled between 1925 and 1928. (fn. 11)
Modest measures to ameliorate traffic problems
included the introduction of pedestrian crossings and
traffic lights at the Dee Bridge in 1934. Traders,
however, successfully resisted all attempts to restrict
parking in the city centre, or to introduce one-way
traffic systems. (fn. 12)

By 1920 it was recognized that the only effective
remedy was to build an outer ring-road to divert
through traffic away from the city centre altogether.
Such a solution was expensive and required the cooperation of Cheshire and Flintshire county councils,
on whose territory much of the new road would run. (fn. 13)
Even so, by 1924 a complete route had been mapped,
controversially cutting across the avenue leading from
Overleigh to Eaton Hall, the home of the duke of
Westminster. A start was made on the Flintshire
section in 1929, when the government provided 75
per cent of the cost, but in 1931 the financial crisis
halted the project. In 1935 work was resumed on the
same terms. Hopes of a rapid conclusion were, however, dashed by the outbreak of war. (fn. 14)

By the early 1920s there was an additional proposal,
attributed to the town clerk, for an eastern inner bypass
to relieve traffic congestion at the Cross by cutting
across the grounds of Dee House to connect Vicars
Lane with Pepper Street. In 1926 the Ministry of
Transport agreed to find a third of the cost. (fn. 15) Work
had begun when archaeological investigations revealed
the remains of the Roman amphitheatre in the path of
the proposed road. Reluctantly the city council's
improvement committee was forced by central government to change the route so that it followed the curve
of the amphitheatre's outer wall along a widened Little
St. John Street. Controversy over the route and the
design of the new gateway cut in the city wall, and the
effect of the Depression on government funding,
delayed completion of the scheme until 1938. (fn. 16)

The City Centre. The taste for mock half-timbered
buildings persisted in Chester well into the 1920s, even
though they were going out of fashion in most other
town centres. (fn. 17) Not all Chester's buildings of that kind
were of poor quality, notwithstanding the comments
made in 1929 by the dean of Chester's son, Francis
Bennett, who deplored the replacement of 'decent,
honest Georgian' by 'wretched, ill-designed black and
white'. (fn. 18) For example, the Manchester and District Bank
(later Royal Bank of Scotland) at the corner of Foregate
Street and Frodsham Street was built to a well detailed
design of 1921 by Francis Jones. (fn. 19) Nor did all new
buildings in the centre conform to the black-and-white
idiom. Several national chain stores built shops in their
own house styles at the east end of the town centre,
including the neo-Georgian Marks & Spencer, designed
in 1932 by Norman Jones and Leonard Rigby of
Manchester, and the cautiously Art Deco premises of
Montague Burton, designed by Harry Wilson of Leeds
in 1928, both in Foregate Street. (fn. 20) Many shops received
alterations, such as the steel-framed third storey added
to Browns in Eastgate Street by Forbes and Tate of
London in 1929, (fn. 21) and during the mid 1930s the centre
was transformed at street and Row level by dozens of
new shop fronts. (fn. 22) The most unashamedly modern
buildings were the cinemas built on prominent sites
in the main streets, particularly the Odeon, designed by
Harry Weedon and opened in 1936, which was unavoidable in the view down Northgate Street. (fn. 23) The
Regal, designed in the same year by the A.B.C.'s
architects in a more subdued Art Deco style, filled
the corner of Foregate Street and Love Lane. (fn. 24) Only a
few new buildings, such as Maxwell Ayrton's St.
Werburgh Row of 1935 in St. Werburgh Street, were
designed in a manner consciously sympathetic with
their surroundings. (fn. 25)

The corporation's town planning not only failed to
ensure that most new buildings enhanced the environment, but also made low cost rather than quality the
motivation in its own projects. The council's attitude
was apparent in 1929 in the controversy about the
design of a new gate in the walls to connect with
Pepper Street. The Chester Archaeological Society
spearheaded a campaign, supported by the Society
for the Protection of Ancient Buildings, for a sympathetically designed gateway and for keeping the land
surrounding it as public open space. Its case was that
'the city's greatest asset, even in a narrow financial
sense, is its historic character'. (fn. 26) It is unlikely that the
council, whose improvement committee had initially
wanted a simple postern gate, (fn. 27) would have heeded
such admonitions had the walls and gates not been
scheduled under the Ancient Monuments Act of
1913. (fn. 28) The Office of Works, whose permission was
necessary to breach the walls, pressed the council to
commission a design for the new gate from Walter
Tapper, president of the Royal Institute of British
Architects. Tapper's original plan, a large gateway
with posterns, gardens outside the walls, and a large
piazza within, was rejected by the improvement committee as much too expensive, and work started on the
road before the matter was resolved. Renewed pressure
from the Office of Works ensured that Tapper was
consulted on two further occasions, the last in 1935. (fn. 29)
Although he died before giving his advice, his son
Michael produced a design for a gate with simplified
medieval references which was officially opened in
1938 as the Newgate. (fn. 30) The largest public building
planned in Chester between the wars, the neo-Georgian
extension to County Hall designed in 1938 by the
county architect E. Mainwaring Parkes and completed
after 1945, was a meagre affair unworthy of its historic
site and riverside setting. (fn. 31)

Conservation. The city's existing reputation for
neglecting or destroying its historic architecture was
reinforced after 1918. (fn. 32) Not only were Georgian buildings replaced, but genuine timber-framed houses were
allowed to fall into disrepair. The council delayed, for
example, over the restoration of Stanley Palace, purchased by the Archaeological Society but then sold to
the earl of Derby, who presented it to the city in 1928.
When work eventually began in 1932, it was greatly
criticized as overzealous and undertaken at the behest
of 'council reactionaries'. (fn. 33) There were also allegations
that Chester's 'meagreness of civic pride' led it to
neglect the walls, described as 'squalid and depressing'
and unfit to be open to the public. (fn. 34)

Throughout the 1920s and 1930s the revivified
Archaeological Society lobbied the council hard on
conservation issues, (fn. 35) but government intervention
was the principal means of preserving the city's historic
fabric. Indeed in 1927 a local inspector of ancient
monuments, reporting that the walls were in disrepair,
commented that 'the city will do nothing worth doing
unless it has to, and no one but the Office of Works can
protect what remains from decay'. (fn. 36) Although the Dee
Bridge and by 1938 the amphitheatre were also scheduled, many historic buildings remained neglected. The
problem was of great concern to Greenwood, the city
surveyor, who in 1933 sought to make a list of those
worthy of preservation. (fn. 37)

One seriously endangered historic building was the
Blue Bell Inn in Northgate Street, which dated from the
mid 15th century and was reputed the oldest domestic
building in the city. In 1930 it was bought by the
improvement committee for demolition as part of a
plan to widen Northgate Street. (fn. 38) Abandoned for six
years, it fell into serious decay despite protests from the
Chester branch of the Council for the Preservation
of Rural England, the Chester Archaeological Society,
and the duke of Westminster. Eventually the Office of
Works intervened, asking the council to reconsider,
and pointing out that the plan to widen Northgate
Street was impracticable since the Northgate itself was
a scheduled monument. (fn. 39) Although the council was
thus prevented from destroying the Blue Bell it refused
to spend money preserving it and the building
remained unrepaired in 1939. (fn. 40)

The state of the Watergate Street Rows also caused
anxiety and public debate, and in 1938 the council
bought several buildings apparently in order to preserve them. By then the improvement committee,
which declared that 'we depend very largely on our
antiquities for our prosperity', may have had a change
of heart about the city's historic buildings. (fn. 41) Local
conservationists, mindful of its past record, remained
sceptical. (fn. 42)

Archaeology. The controversy over the design of the
Newgate coincided with an even more contentious
issue, the fate of the Roman amphitheatre. Interest in
Roman Chester had already been stimulated by the
excavation of Roman barrack blocks in Deanery Fields
by Robert Newstead, curator of the Chester Archaeological Society's collections and the dominant figure
in the city's archaeology between the wars. It was
greatly heightened by the accidental discovery of the
amphitheatre in 1929 in the grounds of Dee House.
Excavation in 1930-1 by Newstead and J. P. Droop,
professor of classical archaeology at Liverpool University, was financed by the Archaeological Society and
made a pioneering contribution to Roman archaeology
in Chester. (fn. 43) The improvement committee, some of
whose members attempted to deny that the remains
were those of an amphitheatre, nevertheless continued
with its original plan to build a road across the site. The
Office of Works responded by offering to pay the costs
of excavation and preservation. Together with the
Ministry of Transport, which was providing financial
support for the road, it insisted that the road should be
diverted round the amphitheatre, arguing that it would
be a unique addition to the city's attractions and result
in 'a large and permanent increase in the number of
visitors'. (fn. 44)

The council, which owned only the land needed for
the road, refused to buy the rest of the site. A campaign
was mounted to raise sufficient private funding to buy
it, but national and international interest was greater
than in Chester, partly perhaps because there was little
to see above ground. An Epstein sculpture, Genesis, was
lent to the Grosvenor Museum to help raise money,
and Mussolini sent his good wishes for the project to
the Archaeological Society. By 1934 the society had
collected sufficient funds to buy St. John's House on
the northern half of the site, which could therefore be
excavated. The rest, perhaps better preserved because
the ground level was higher there, was to remain buried
in the grounds of Dee House. (fn. 45) There matters rested
until after the war.

Open Spaces. In 1919 Chester had high levels of
environmental pollution more usually associated with
industrial towns, largely caused by smoke from closely
packed domestic chimneys and perhaps by emissions
from the gas works. (fn. 46) Although there was some
improvement in the 1930s, mainly because of slum
clearance in the city centre, such conditions made the
need for public open spaces particularly important.
There were, however, only 186 acres of open space, well
short of the 518 acres required by the accepted
standards of the day. The shortage was worse than it
seemed, for some of the existing space was not laid out
for recreation and the total included the Roodee, which
was not always available to the public, and Earl's Eye or
the Meadows, which was subject to serious flooding. In
1929 the city acquired 64½ acres of the Meadows, but
shrank from the expense of providing drainage and
access. (fn. 47)